rowyn

After watching Vicorva stream Strange Horticulture, I bought the game and then finished it in a weekend (it’s not a long game).

It’s fun: I liked the little puzzles that were often pretty easy, and that the game had a “hint” option so if I didn’t find the puzzle easy I could just keep asking for hints until it gave me the answer. XD

I still wanted to play after I got an ending, so I played some more to identify all the plants. And then started a new game. But I remember all the answers so it’s not as much fun as the first time.

So now I’m thinking about running it as a play-by-post RPG.

One reason I like the concept of Strange Horticulture as an RPG is that the mechanics (identifying plants and solving puzzles) are nonviolent.

I don't usually like puzzles as a game mechanic because I get frustrated easily. But Strange Horticulture's "hints" option solved that, which is why I want to incorporate that explicitly into the RPG.

The video game has some off-camera violence. I'll let the players decide if they want violence in the RPG or strictly non-violent.

Game premise:

All the PCs play people who have recently started to run a shop of mysterious and mystical plants. None of the plants are properly labeled. You have a book about plants but it’s bad at describing them. (You get to decide how you got the shop/plants/book).

Game play:

• General roleplay: interacting with customers and deciding how you want to handle them
• Identifying plants: I’ll provide a bunch of plant pictures and some poor descriptions of them and you get to try to figure out what goes with what.
• Solving small puzzles/riddles: you’ll get clues and solving them will give you more things. Sometimes the clues will be Extremely Obvious. I do not promise challenging puzzles.

Each PC has a talking animal companion that can give them hints, but There’s a Cost. (Maybe parts of your soul! Or your memories! Or kitty treats! I will let the players as a whole decide this one.)

Likewise, I’ll let the players decide how serious they want the game to be -- do you want Lives To Depend on your correct identification of plants/solving puzzles, or more like “the most dire consequence is that some customer is angry at you because the wrong plant attracted ants and ruined their picnic”?

There will be an overall plot of some kind, but also small stories about helping customers (or failing to help customers by providing the wrong plant, whether on purpose or not) and how they react.

I’m thinking 3-4 players, and players get many of the same puzzles to solve and can collaborate to solve them in various ways. And one of the mysteries is “why did we all start running our shops at the same time in different places?”

In the event of players who join the game but later have to leave for whatever reason: I'd like to have their PC retire and/or mysteriously depart and hand over their shops to a new player or NPC, so that their departure needn't impact the other PCs. n_n

I will not use any of the plot points or specific puzzles from the video game, so there'll be no spoilers for the video game and no advantage to having played it or not.

Would anyone be interested in playing?

Possible players so far:

• Ciel
• Alex
• Anke

Talking about using Discord for an RPG reminded me of how the media in which I play a game shapes the game. Every medium has its own strength and weaknesses. For example:

Face-to-face: In-person games have great advantages in speed. It's much faster when you can see and hear players clearly. You can use physical props readily: miniatures, dice, and game boards are easy to use in-person. But there are disadvantages to face-to-face: there's no built-in, automatic record of game play. You have to schedule a time and you can only play with the people who show up. During play, the GM either has to prepare for a variety of different player choices, or limit player choice, or be good at improvising. I find game play less immersive in person: it's hard for a GM to play multiple NPCs at once who are presenting different perspectives or arguing with each other. It's also hard for a player to convincingly play characters who are very unlike the player.

Video or voice-based games: I have little experience with these, and what I do is mostly "this is an inferior version of face-to-face." The only advantage I know of over face-to-face is "you don't have to physically get people in the same room". If there are others, they've eluded me.

Online scheduled games: My own experience with this is mostly on MUCKs, but it's played similarly for me on other text-based chat clients. This style approximates face-to-face in that participants all show up at a scheduled time, all play and respond to each other in real time, and stop playing at the end of the session. The advantages of this style: it's easy and natural for the GM to switch between characters, and participants can easily be characters who are nothing like themselves. The GM still needs to prepare/improvise, but usually has a little more time to think between actions, because play is slower. Disadvantages: play is slower (everything has to be typed). There are "virtual tabletop" tools out there; I don't know if these come close to the ease of setup of real props now, because I haven't tried them in years.

Online unscheduled synchronous games: This is the MUCK style of "you show up when you want to roleplay and play with whoever's there". I have never found this to be a very satisfying model of roleplay, because it's hard to tell a story when you don't know who will be involved in it or for how long. Sometimes this encourages burnout -- people who are hyperinvolved and always on and always playing until they flame out after a few months. But I've known other people who made it work. The main advantage over scheduled is in the name: you don't have to schedule play.

Email or forum-based games: These play fairly similarly in my experience. Participants play by posting to the email group or forum. Play is asynchronous: you send a post to the group and you get responses hours or days later. Email is good for games that are driven by conversation or player actions that don't require die rolls. They are terrible for games with a lot of combat or anything else that requires die-rolling. It's good in that you don't have to schedule a time for it, and bad in that it can result in burnout -- people can't look away from the game for fear it will get away from them.

Discord is an interesting medium for a game because a Discord chat group has a persistent history. MUCKs and many chat clients only show you the activity while you are connected to them. Discord will let you scroll back to the start of the chat, if you want.

Discord can be set up to give notifications, or not, so it's easy to see if a chat is active or to ignore it.

For various reasons, my own preferred play is unscheduled and asynchronous. I am generally okay with responding in a time frame of "several hours" and run into issues when it's "a few minutes".

And I am thinking: how do you structure a story so that it best accommodates my style of play? For example, I know that if I want to play a combat-heavy dungeon stomp, I'm best off doing that face-to-face.

But if I want to have a game where:
* Play is unscheduled and unsynchronous
* Participants are involved at varying levels of commitment: some people respond quickly, some respond slowly

What kind of features built into the story will best enable that?

One thing that I discovered while playing with Bard Bloom was that telepathy among the PCs was extremely useful for keeping a game active. All the players could talk to each other without the GM needing to be involved in the conversation, even if the party was presently split up.

Splitting up the party had advantages in forum/email play that it doesn't have in most other forms of play: it allows the GM to interact with each player on that player's priorities, without them getting trampled over by players who respond more quickly. This requires a pretty active GM. In theory, you could get this same effect in Discord by splitting the party between different chat channels. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice.

Mostly, I am thinking about story features like "telepathy": things you can set up so there's an in-character explanation for something that is useful/needed due to out-of-character reasons. What if there's a story explanation for why characters are more or less active at different point in the story, for OOC reasons? One of my friends used to play a game where the characters all had a curse that sometimes one or more of them would turn into a gemstone, and the other characters would have to protect them. The "curse" took effect if the player was absent that week. This isn't a very compelling storytelling hook by itself, but it's the kind of thing I'm thinking about. What if the game took place on an astral plane, and characters act at different speeds depending on arbitrary factors (that amount OOCly to "how available were various participants?") How do you structure this so that players don't feel like they're disadvantaged if they're not around as much?

Anyway, I am kind of stuck on what kind of stories lend themselves best to the format, and what kind of system. So I wanted to write this out and see what other people thought. :)

Everyone ends up with their own pet peeves in tabletop gaming. One of mine, which has annoyed me since I started gaming 38 years ago, is "character creation choices that require the players to bet on how long the game will last."

Most games are short-lived. I haven't made up as many characters for games that never started as I have for ones that have, but the ratio is probably no better than 1:3. Many games that make it to one session do not get more than one. The campaign that goes on for years is the outlier. Moreover, you never know which you're going to get when you're making up a character. Plans for epic story arc campaigns often die after a few sessions. The game where my character gained the most power, from starting level to finish, was advertised by its GM as 'a half-assed playtest that will peter out after a week or two.' Mirari and Game of October were both intended to be short-term games and both ran for 2-4 years and had more than a hundred sessions each. The only sense in which they were "short term" was that they each ended at the completion of the game's full story arc. ("Just Trust Me", which took several months to finish, was as close as I ever got to running an actual short-but-complete game).

My point: I can tell you many things about a game during character creation, but "how long will it last" is SO not one of them. And yet many games have things which are in place nominally for "character balance" but in practice are only "balanced" if your game is lasts for exactly X sessions. In original AD&D, the nonhuman races generally had stat advantages but in most cases had harsh level caps. If your game didn't last past level 5, the elves and half-orcs were clearly better. If your game lasted to level 18, they were at a vicious, hideous handicap. (If your group actually played with level caps. I don't know anyone who did.)

Most of D&D descendants don't take approaches quite this dramatic, but I still know many systems where you can take a short-term handicap to get a long-term advantage. "Your character is a Quick Learner: pay 10 xp now and get +1 xp per session." Or conversely: "You are a Slow Learner but you've studied hard to get this far: you get an extra 10 xp to spend now but will get -1 xp per session". Sometimes the abilities themselves are like this: "the skill is useless at the starting level but it's great once you've built it up." "This skill starts out great but it doesn't improve at all with experience, unlike other skills." Vampire: the Masquerade did this thing where your max power was entirely determined by your generation. If you didn't buy the lowest possible generation at game start, your character could never become powerful -- but if you did, you had few points left to be competent at the outset.

It's like the designers think "well, you can trade being great now for being great later, that's balanced." Except that I don't know if later exists, and if later does exist, I have no idea how much later there will be. It's like being told "plan for your retirement: you have about a 40% chance of dying tomorrow and a 1% chance of living 2000 years, and we're not going to tell you the odds of the possibilities in between, and no, you can't get a job again later if you don't save enough. GOOD LUCK." Systems like these always make me feel like the game hasn't even started yet and I've already lost.

I usually make the bet that the game will last for years, when some system makes me do it. I don't think I've ever been right.All my games that lasted for years weren't in systems that did this.

That may not be coincidence, come to think of it.

Nothing in particular motivated this, just thinking about game systems. So what are your tabletop peeves or preferences?

This will be a PBEM RPG because my neuroses are rather incompatible with synchronous play. Apologies to those of you who don't like asynchronous play. :/

I've got two concepts I'd like to run, and I'll give more details about both of them under the cut-tag. Short version of each:

* Power Enslaved: The PCs are god-like beings held captive by NPCs, their powers largely controlled by their masters. The campaign will be about the PCs figuring out the details of their situation and what they decide to do about it.
* Three Forks: A World Tree game set in the lower branches, where a new prime colony-city is attempting to live more-or-less peacefully with its nonprime neighbors. The campaign will be about the PCs living and working in this area and generally trying to preserve this peace. PCs may be either primes or nonprimes.

Both games will run rules-light: I plan to avoid die rolls and combat situations. Gameplay will revolve around what the players decide to do within the constraints of the game (choosing to help faction A instead of B, for example). I want the game to be varied based on player choice and ingenuity rather than die rolls.

The Three Forks game will use World Tree rules when it's necessary to involve them. (Including beta rules created by the Blooms for playing various nonprime races). For the Powers Enslaved game, I'll write up a general character generation guideline by which you'll make up your character and have an idea what your PC can and cannot do. Close situations may be resolved by die rolls, but mostly you'll be able to describe what your character does and only need GM feedback to give information about the results or NPC reactions and so forth.

My experiences with PC vs PC conflict have been largely bad, so characters will be designed with the intent that the PCs will get along reasonably well and not have opposing goals.

If you're interested in playing, please leave a comment below or email me (my gmail account is LadyRowyn) with the following:

a) Which setting(s) you're willing to play in
b) Which setting you'd prefer (if you have a preference).

Thanks!
( Setting Details! )

Kristi convinced Adelaide's mom as well as her own parents to let Adelaide sleep over. Kristi's own father worked the night shift, and her mother went to bed around nine. At about eleven, they prepared to sneak out: Kristi dressed up like a ninja, all in black. Adelaide was as quiet in sneaking as she was in class: she went out the window and climbed down the adjoining tree with perfect balance, helping Kristi along as she went. As they walked to the rendezvous, Adelaide munched nervously from a box of Wheat Thins.

Natalie and Matt had an even easier time getting out. Their parents mostly ignored them, leaving them to the care of their crazy-cat-lady nanny. She cooked for them: sometimes magnificent meals like grilled salmon and risotto. And sometimes ... more inexplicable dishes. Like tonight's macaroni with liver, and Cheez-it loaf.

They were too anxious to have eaten much anyway.

The four of them met on the street leading to the abandoned mansion, and were surprised to find Jim and Mark there too. "I figured it'd be like an adventure," Jim said. "I brought everything we'd need in my backpack -- rope, my phone, flashlight, lantern, kerosene, lighter, canteen .... "

"Bobby!" Natalie cried out, as the little boy came running up too, wearing his soccer shinguards like armor. "What are you doing out this late? You shouldn't be out by yourself!"

"But I had to make sure you were okay Nattie!" Bobby insisted. Natalie bent down to rig a tether for him, tsking. It was too late to send him home. And besides, it's not like any of us should be here, Kristi thought to herself, clutching Adelaide's hand. Adelaide crunched on another Wheat Thin.

As the seven continued up the hill, a movement from the side caught their eye, and they turned to see a lone figure emerge from the shadows at the wheel of a vehicle.

It was Wayne, wearing Batman footie pajamas, in his pedal-powered batcar. A cape made from a blanket tied around his neck fluttered in the breeze, then fell around his shoulders as he pedaled to a stop beside the group.

"... okay, who brought Batman?" Kristi asked.

"I think he brought himself," Mark said.

Natalie made a tether for Wayne, too, and passed the handle for it to Kristi. Together, the eight of them made their way to the yard of the abandoned house.

Kristi looked around nervously. "Did Scotty say to meet outside or inside?"

"Outside," Matt said.

"Okay well we're here and he's not so I guess he chickened out let's go," Kristi said.

"I'm here." Scotty stepped out from the woods surrounding the property, with five of his friends at his back. "I see you were too cowardly to come alone."

Kristi eyed Scotty's friends, all 5th-graders like him. "So were you."

Matt glanced over his own collection of friends, all younger and some of them less than half Scotty's size. "Well, if you're afraid to face Batman in the dark ... "

Scotty crossed his arms with a sour look. "I'm not the one who's a chicken. So here's what you're going to do, if you wanna prove you're not a coward. You're going to go into that house, go to the basement, flash your light through the window so we know you're there, then go to the attic and do the same."

Adelaine and Mark both looked terrified at the very mention of this.

"What we're gonna do?" Matt repeated. "What about you?"

"I'm not the one with anything to prove," Scotty said.

"So you admit you're too scared to do it yourself?"

Scotty started to say something, then snorted. "Fine. I'm not scared. I'll go in first."

Adelaine clutched at Kristi's hand, looking like she wanted to stop the other boy even if he was a mean bully. But no one did. The kids stood on the grounds outside the house, watching as the red-haired kid disappeared inside. A minute later, a light flashed through the basement window. Adelaide squeaked a little.

Mark muttered to himself, "He shouldn't go in the attic, it's not safe in the attic."

"It's fine," Kristi said, patting Mark's back in reassurance. "He's gonna be fine. We'll be fine. It's just a house. Here, hug Cthulhu." She took her stuffed toy out of her backpack and passed him to Mark, who clutched at it and did not look comforted.

Minutes passed. No light shone out of the attic window. Scotty did not come back out. Wayne started cutting away at his tether gradually, with a pair of fingernail clippers. "Stop that," Kristi said. "Batman doesn't break things."

Jim checked his smartphone. "It's been twenty minutes," he said finally.

"This is crazy," Matt said. "He should have been back by now. I'm going in after him."

"No," one of Scotty's friends said. "It's cool. I'm sure he's fine. Give him another ten minutes."

Not entirely persuaded, the kids waited.

Five minutes later, a terrible scream pierced the night, like the wailing of a woman in agony.

Scotty's friends took off in a panic.

"Call 911!" Kristi yelled at Jim.

"We can't call 911!" Mark said. "None of us are supposed to be here!"

Matt said, "And they'll just think we're pranking them, if we tell them we heard a scream at night by the haunted house."

"It doesn't matter if they think it's a prank, they still have to send someone!" Kristi said.

"Maybe Scotty is pranking us," Jim said.

Wayne gave up on waiting for the others and charged for the front door, snapping his weakened tether. Kristi tried to intercept him, but the little kid easily evaded her lunge.

Bobby followed in Wayne's wake, pulling Natalie stumbling along behind him. As Wayne vanished through the mansion's front door, Bobby reached the porch. It caved way beneath him and he fell into the basement below.

"Bobby!" Natalie fought to keep her balance at the edge of the hole. Jim and Matt tried to tackle her to keep her from falling, and instead sent all three of them tumbling in after Bobby.

Through good luck, though they suffered a few bruises, no one was seriously hurt. They got out their flashlights and called up "We're okay!" as the kids above yelled down at them.

Adelaide, Kristi, and Mark advanced more cautiously on the porch, skirting the gaping hole. "Jim, throw me your rope," Kristi yelled. He tossed it up, and Kristi tested the posts of the porch and railing for something sturdy enough to tie it to. Everything felt rotted and weak. "This is a death trap ... I can't believe it hasn't fallen down already. I can't find anything safe to secure it to."

"We'll find the door up," Matt said. "Don't worry!"

Kristi threw the rope back down. Wayne had vanished into the house. "Okay, we'll go in and look for the entrance from the first floor."

Jim and Matt shone their flashlights around the basement. The basement was full of wine racks -- row after row of them -- but no bottles. There was no door visible, but stacks of wooden crates were piled against one wall. Detritus and cobwebs littered the dusty floor. An old moosehead was mounted on the wall, something metallic glinting in its mouth. Natalie checked Bobby over to make sure he was all right, scolding him for running ahead of them.

A flash of something blue by the crates caught the attention of the older boys. "What was that?" Matt whispered.

"I don't know," Jim said. "One of the websites said that this house used to have a beersoul."

"A beersoul? What's that?"

"It's like a brownie for wine cellars. They'll take care of your stuff, keep it in order and clean and make sure nothing happens to it. But you have to give them a pint of beer a day, or ... "

"Or what?" Natalie asked.

"Or else." Jim gave them a meaningful look.

Matt gave the moosehead a closer inspection, putting his hand into its mouth. He retrieved a metal flask, like the one Mr.Jacobs carried, but much older. Its cap was rusted shut, but something was sloshing inside it.

A blue face appeared behind the crates, yellow eyes glinting ferally at the kids. Natalie hugged Bobby to her chest so he wouldn't see. Jim swung his flashlight to catch it in the full beam, but it darted out of sight again. "Something's there."

Matt tried to open the flask, but it was stuck fast. He got out the plier attachment on his swiss army knife and wrenched at it, but only scored the metal around the lid.

"I'll help you with that Mattie!" Bobby broke free of Natalie's grip and took the flask, wrenching it open. Alcohol fumes wafted out. "There you go!"

"I loosened it first," Matt mumbled.

A plaintive, drawn-out whimper came from the crates. Matt handed Bobby back to Natalie and advanced on the boxes, holding out the flask. He put it down where they'd seen the face, and stepped back.

A blue furry creature, looking a bit like a cross between a chimp and a dog, snatched up the flask in both paw-hands and drank it down, making tiny slurping contented noises. The children stared with a mixture of terror and fascination.

Natalie broke the silence first. "It's so cute!"

Bobby squirmed about in her arms. "Ahhh MONSTER!" He broke from her grasp and charged it.

Matt tackled him to the ground. "No, Bobby, don't!"

"Are you a beersoul?" Jim asked. The furry blue creature nodded. "How long have you been here?"

"Man many years," the creature said. "All dry, so dry, so very dry. Now at last! Drink again." He waved the flask happily. "Thank you."

"It's not a monster, Bobby," Natalie said, as Matt let Bobby up. "It"s a magical talking puppy."

"Puppy?" Bobby said. He peered at the beersoul, then ran over to it and began patting its head. The creature's mobile ears splayed out to either side. "Can you do magic?"

The beersoul nodded, and spread its arms. Candles in sconces the children had not noticed earlier lit up, flooding the room with a soft golden glow. The dust and debris in the room swept from the room, billowing from the hole in the porch in a mass of cobwebs. Planks flew upwards to nail themselves neatly into place, repairing the hole like a master carpenter.

*

From the front hall, Kristi, Adelaide, Mark and Wayne could see through the open front door as the cobwebs billowed up for no apparent reason, and heard the sound of wood hammering into place under its own power.

They freaked out.

"They shouldn't have gone into the basement!" Adelaide wailed. "There are always monsters in the basement!" Kristi stared in stunned disbelief, clutching her stuffed Cthulhu. Wayne shrieked. Mark worked to calm them down, and after some moments he got them to stop panicking.

"We have to get them out of the basement," Kristi said once she'd calmed down, starting for the stairs leading down.

"No!" Adelaide grabbed her arm. "You can't go in the basement! You don't know what might be down there!"

*

In the basement, the beersoul was moving the crates for the kids. At their request, it showed them the contents as well, ripping crates open with three-fingered taloned hands. One box was full of old books: an antique family bible with a family tree in it, an ancient picture book of fairy tales that Bobby seized on, and several other old and valuable-looking volumes.

Another crate held alchemical supplies. Jim dug through them while the beersoul opened another crate. He couldn't tell what must of the supplies did, but he found a ceremonial-looking knife, with the groove down its center streaked by rusty brown. Jim pocketed the knife, and next found some notes. "It says Mr. Vernon was using these for scientific experiments based on practices by ... African slaves in the Caribbean," Jim said. "... the last page says that his first subject was going to be 'to save my unfortunate daughter, Claire.'" Jim turned to the Bible and flipped to the family tree. "It says Claire died at four months."

The next crate held a tiny coffin.

The kids didn't open the coffin.

Kristi and Mark came down through the now-cleared doorway, having left Adelaide upstairs to protect Wayne, or possibly the other way around. They watched the beersoul in wide-eyed amazement.

"What was Mr. Vernon doing?" Natalie asked the beersoul in a hushed voice.

"Bad things. Very bad things." The beersoul shook its head. "Putting souls into inanimate things."

"Is this all of his experiments?"

"No. Others in the attic."

"... what's in the attic?" Matt asked.

"Things I not let him keep here," the beersoul said.

"We are NOT going to the attic," Mark interjected.

"He was bad man," the beersoul said. "Very bad. They took Master Vernon away. But then they brought him back."

Kristi swallowed hard. "... how many pieces was he in when they brought him back?"

The beersoul counted, slowly, using both hands. "Six."

"... Scotty's on his own let's go home," Kristi said.

"Have you seen another kid tonight?" Matt asked. "A red-haired boy, few inches taller than me?"

The beersoul said, "Boy appeared at top of steps, shone light through, went back up."

"That cheater!" Kristi exclaimed. "He didn't even come down here."

"We still have to find him," Matt said. The kids started trooping up the stairs, the beersoul following them. Adelaide stared at the strange creature as it reached the top, then offered it a Wheat Thin.

The beersoul took the Wheat thin and turned it over, perplexed. "Thank you?" Adelaide demonstrated by eating one herself.The beersoul ohhhed and put it in his mouth. He gave a big artificial smile, turned around and walked past the other kids, and spit it out as soon as he was out of Adelaide's sight. He put the cracker in a pocket with an expression between confused and appalled.

But before they left the basement, Natalie turned to Matt. "What about him?" She pointed to the beersoul. "We can't just leave him here."

"He does need a can of beer every day," Jim said.

"That's less than Bobby's uncle," Matt pointed out.

"We have a wine cellar," Natalie said. "He could stay there. Our parents order more liquor after every party anyway. They'd never notice one drink a day."

The beersoul brightened at this prospect, long ears pricking.

"Well ... all right."

After Natalie gave him the address, the little blue furry creature put a blessing on Matt's swiss army knife in thanks. Then it hurried away, speeding out into the night.

It was Monday morning, and eight kids -- ranging in age from four to eleven -- waited at the street corner for the school bus to arrive. Kristi, in fifth grade, was the oldest, wearing a black skirt and jacket with a neckcloth and a white blouse -- like a school uniform, even though they all went to public school and didn't have a uniform. She was talking to her best friend, a shy seven-year old named Adelaide, because Kristi was weird and most of the kids her own age avoided her.

"I was working on my new book all weekend!" Kristi told her little friend, who listened with quiet attentiveness. "It's got a dragon and a knight and a princess. The princess and the dragon are trying to rescue the knight -- "

Next to them, Jim looked up from the game he was playing on his smartphone. "What kind of dragon? Western, eastern, winged, not winged?" Jim was the wizkid, the one who knew everything, especially about computers and video games.

"Western! Green and scaly and HUGE and he shoots fire from the vanes of his wings, like a jet plane. That's how he flies," Kristi said.

Jim pushed up his glasses. "Actually, dragons breathe fire. It doesn't shoot from their wings. And they're too big to fly."

Kristi made a face at him, crossing her arms. "It's my story and he can fly in it if I want him to."

"Dragons?" Bobby piped up. He was only six. "I like dragons! Are they scary dragons?"

"No, the dragon is the good guy," Kristi said.

"Yay!" Bobby bounced up and down, while nine year-old Natalie clung grimly to his hand to keep him from running into the street in his enthusiasm. Bobby's mother paid Natalie five dollars a week to make sure Bobby got to school each day. Natalie and her twin brother Matt were with four year-old Wayne, too, because the twins were the sort of people parents trusted to be responsible. Wayne was wearing his Batman hoodie, as always, and wouldn't walk to the bus stop with his foster parents because 'Batman don't need help'.

Wayne had ... issues.

Nine year-old Mark stood a little apart from the other kids; he was the outcast, and even in groups like this where he didn't get picked on, kids rarely paid attention to him. He peered at them over the edge of his book, listening.

The bus rolled up to the corner and stopped, the door opening with a pneumatic hiss and a ka-chunk. Mr. Jacobs, the bus driver, gave the children a surly look. "No running," he started to say. Wayne dashed headlong up the steps, evading Matt's attempt to slow him. Mr. Jacob's arm swung down and caught Wayne by the throat like the hand of God. He turned the little boy's head towards him. "It's Monday, I'm tired, I'm hungover, and they don't pay me enough. So walk to your seat, sit down, and keep your mouth shut. Got it, Batman?"

Wayne blinked at him, and nodded. In silence, the rest of the kids filed into seats: Bobby near the front between Matt and Natalie, Wayne opposite them, Kristi and Adelaide in the middle, Jim across the aisle, and Mark near the back of the bus.

As the bus started up, Jim slouched down in his seat, playing with his Gameboy. "Hey, did someone see the Joker on the bus?" he asked loudly, without looking up.

Wayne jumped atop his seat and spun about. "Where?"

Mr. Jacobs slammed on the brakes. The bus jerked to a halt, causing Wayne to bang his head against the seat back. Without a glance to the toddler, Mr. Jacobs stumped back to Jim's seat. Jim slouched lower still, continuing to play his game. Mr. Jacobs hit the power button on it.

"Dammit!" Jim swore, then blanched as he realized what he'd said. "Sorry," he added, looking up at last.

"I don't care if you swear," Mr. Jacobs began.

From the front of the bus, Wayne's little voice piped up, "What does 'dammit' mean?"

"Now I care if you swear."

Jim said, "It means 'thank you'."

"It's a bad word. Don't repeat it." Mr. Jacobs glowered down at Jim. "And I care if you lie to little kids about what words mean. Or say things you know are going to provoke them into jumping around and getting themselves hurt on the bus." His pen scrawled across a detention slip. He handed it to Jim. "I'm giving the other half of this to the principal's office. Report there as soon as we get to school." Mr. Jacobs stumped back to the driver's seat. His fingers tapped longingly against the bulge of a flask in his pocket. The bus started up again.

In his seat between Natalie and Matt, Bobby was kicking his feet back and forth and humming to himself until he felt something wet and gooey dripping into his hair. "Hey!" Next to him, the older Matt turned around to see what was happening.

Scotty, the ginger-haired fifth-grade bully, was blowing his nose messily against the back of Bobby's head. "Cut that out!" Matt yelled.

"Make me," Scotty sneered.

Matt shoved the older boy back, hard enough to knock Scotty's retainer out. The mouth gear skittered down the aisle of the bus. Bobby jumped out of his seat and chased after it as it neared Kristi's seat. Kristi extended one foot and very deliberately stomped on the retainer. Then twisted. The device snapped with a satisfying crack.

Bobby picked up the two pieces and helpfully returned them to Scotty. "You dropped this!"

The older boy -- the biggest on the bus -- snatched up the pieces. "Who broke it? Did you break it, you little freak? I oughta break you -- "

Kristi jumped to her feet. "I broke it," she yelled. "What are you gonna do about it?"

"Just wait 'til we're out of school, you weirdo -- " Scotty balled one hand into a fist.

The bus driver slammed on the brakes again. Kristi swallowed, reconsidering the wisdom of taking credit for breaking the retainer.

But Mr. Jacobs went straight for Scotty and Bobby instead. "What's going on back here?"

"He dripped boogers in my hair!" Bobby piped, pointing at Scotty. "He's a big meaniehead!"

"You whiny little brat -- " Scotty started.

Mr. Jacobs cut him off. "Look, kid. You're being a dick -- " the bus driver paused, suddenly aware of the littlest boys staring at him, wide-eyed and attentive. He cleared his throat. "He's being a Richard. Richard was a kid I always hated. Scotty, you may think you can get away with anything, but not on my bus you don't." He handed Scotty a detention slip and stumped back to the driver's seat.

The bully glared alternately at Kristi and Matt. "I'll get you two for this." Matt bore the threat stoically, but Kristi was worried. Boys didn't usually fight girls ... but Kristi didn't stand a chance if Scotty decided he was going to make an exception.

*

[This story is adapted from the tabletop RP Little Fears game that Randy Milholland ran Saturday night. I played Kristi. All other characters and the game itself are copyright their respective creators. Most of the events are directly from the game, but in cases where I can't recall what led from one event to the next, or where I felt that a literal translation of in-character events didn't properly capture the feel of the game, I've invented additional material.]

For those who are curious: I've created a community, sleethnamedthis, where I'll be posting the logs from my World Tree game. (Or bribing my players to post them for me.) I've already posted the "prelude" log. This was a little light RP between two of the PCs to establish their characters; it happened before I actually started running the game.

Both PBEMs I've been in had no formal limit on posting. In both of them had phases where the list generated 100+ posts per day. (I don't think either ever hit 200 in a day, but I wouldn't swear to it.) koogrr called it "drinking from the firehose." terrycloth once described it as 'the tendency for PBEM to eat your life'.

I actually enjoy having my real life consumed by a fantasy one, but I recognize that not everyone does. (Lut, for example, dislikes having my RL overwritten by my VR. =D )

There are various factors that are likely to make my next game naturally have less traffic than the previous ones:

* I'm likely to set aside hours where I won't be posting -- probably from 8 or 9PM to 7AM CDT. This will ensure that Lut has my attention for a few non-sleeping hours every day. :) This won't be hard-and-fast -- I might toss off quick emails just before bed -- but I won't be spending four hours every night writing email for the game, either. Which, um, I have been known to do in the past. ^_^;;

* Since the game will only encompass 24 hours +/- of in-game time, I expect little if any time-bubbling. When Honored stopped having time-bubbles, list traffic dropped from 150+ emails per day to 30-. There were other factors lowering traffic on Honored at that time, though.

* There'll be fewer PCs in this game than in Honored (which started with six) or +Terrible Butterflies+ (which started with five). I'm expecting to cap this game at four PCs and there's a reasonable chance I'll run with fewer than that. I may have other people playing NPC-ish roles if I get any volunteers for that. I'll talk about this more in a separate post.

Another point to bear in mind: "number of posts per day" is the easiest metric to pull out, but it's not the most accurate one to describe volume. Some PBEM posts set scenes or contained responses to several different previous posts, and these might have several hundred words of new text. Others were only a sentence. I'd guess that the typical PBEM message is about the same length as a typical pose on a MUCK -- maybe a hundred words. I'm thinking that a hundred posts would be about equivalent to a chapter in a book or a short MUCK log.

To sum up: I really don't know what sort of traffic my next game will generate. The issues posed by traffic levels vary, too, depending on player habits and expectations (both IC and OOC). Some examples to consider:

* X, Y and Z are having an active conversation one evening when they're all at their computers. A fourth PC, played by A, is technically in the scene but for whatever reason he's not checking his email so his PC isn't talking. The ensuing conversation is similar to a MUCK log, with each comment in its own post. The next morning, A checks his email and sees 90 new messages. If you are A, will this bother you?

* A responds to 20 of the messages from the flurry last night, inserting his PC into the conversation and re-starting some discussions that X, Y and Z had settled. If you are X, Y or Z, will this bother you?

* The party leader goes with the plan X, Y and Z worked out the night before. The GM starts responding as if it were unfolding, even though X and Y would like to change the plan based on A's insights. Is this a problem?

* Does your reaction vary based on the time lapsed? For example, what if the conversation between X, Y and Z takes place over three days, and then A responds, as opposed to responding 10 hours later? Does it matter if A is regularly delayed in responding, or if this is a rare occurence? Likewise, does it matter if X, Y and Z are often much more active than A or if that only happens now and again?

* Examples of how IC expectations can impact this: if A is playing a PC who has no background in the subject X, Y and Z were discussing, A will care less that he "missed" the conversation than he would if his PC were the party expert. If X's PC is a very cautious sort who hates taking action without thorough consideration first, he will probably be happier about having A extend the conversation than he would if his PC were impatient and eager to get to the action.

I want to note that feeling some or all of these things could be annoying is perfectly reasonable and normal. Yes, it's a game and it would be lovely if all of us could be sublimely indifferent to all of its quirks and oddities, but the truth is if we didn't care about such things we probably wouldn't care about playing at all.

What I want to do now is try to set expectations of what's "normal". Some possible questions for those thinking of playing: what volume of traffic do you think would be too much? Just right? Not enough? (You can answer in terms of either "for the whole list" or "per participant", whichever you feel is more accurate.) If traffic on the list goes over what you consider "too much", how would you want to resolve that? What if it's too little? How much of a concern to you is this likely to pose -- ie, would you be okay if you're making one post a day while others do ten, or vice versa?*

I know that some of you have little experience with PBEMs, so this is asking for guesses in the dark. And the truth is even people with some experience aren't going to know what will work this game. So I'm not going to be surprised or offended if you get into playing and find your feelings change. This isn't the final word, but a starting place. Also, if some of you are thinking "10 posts a day is too many" and others "less than 30 is too few", then I'll know now it's probably better not to put you in the same game together. :)

* You don't have to answer all of these, and feel free to make comments on any related topics. I'll answer these questions myself in a later comment to this post, but I want other people to give their answers first so they'll have slightly less bias. :)